I was a little leery
at first. A friend of mine had seen an unusual and noteworthy flying-bridge
motoryacht at the 2003 Miami International Boat Show, a boat I’d
somehow missed while strolling the docks. And he thought I’d better
give her a look, perhaps even take her for a test spin and write up a
report. What had so intrigued the guy apparently was the fact that the
vessel’s exterior had, for the most part, been designed around a
whopping interior, a novel prioritization in an age that often favors
sleek, sexy exterior styling at all costs. Moreover, the guy who’d
created the interior layout, Long Islander Joe Esposito, was a residential
architect, not a naval one. “He’s done some interesting things,”
my friend promised, “maybe because he’s not all tangled up with
traditions and preconceptions.”

I caught up with the
SeaVana 60—an appellation derived from the savanna-like allure of
the open sea, according to some brochures I’d gotten ahold of—at
the Rybovich Spencer yard in West Palm Beach. My chary attitude took the
first big hit as soon as I caught a glimpse of the boat’s curvaceous,
highly styled superstructure—it seemed sleek enough and at least
as sexy as the superstructures of most other big Euro-stylers on the market
these days, maybe even sexier. Whether or not the interior layout would
really knock my socks off I wasn’t able to tell at this point, of
course, but I could certainly vouch for the profile and the glasswork—it
looked great.

Esposito stuck out a
friendly hand. Then, while we stood on the expansive, teak-paved swim
platform for a moment, he told me a bit about the project that’s
taken up so much of his life over the past couple of years—the creation
of a sort of hybrid motoryacht with European styling and finish, and a
huge, wide-open American layout. The story began with a quest. Esposito,
an experienced boater, was shopping the 50-something range, looking for
a layout with three fair-size staterooms, each with an en suite head,
and a main-deck accommodation as commodious and comfortable as a high-end
stateside condo. “I eventually discovered that what I wanted simply
didn’t exist,” he explained, “so I began noodling around
and finally put together a layout I felt was pretty unusual and just about
perfect.”

The next step took Esposito
to England, where Southampton-based naval architect Bill Dixon drew up
a nicely proportioned, seaworthy envelope to accommodate the layout and
a group of craftsmen from the boatbuilding town of Oundle began breathing
life into it. As things progressed, Esposito figured he had to be on the
right track—going with British naval architecture, craftsmanship,
and styling addressed one of his major concerns, and his own all-American
layout addressed the other.

I was able to judge
the outcome as soon as we stepped into the SeaVana’s saloon. Indeed,
the place was huge, thanks to a couple of subtle strategies. For one thing,
the galley/

dinette/helm area had
been pushed well forward, a move that added considerable elbowroom. And
then, the layout was savvily configured to facilitate traffic flow in
the same way a thoughtfully designed home might be. I found I could move
within the thoroughly open and integrated arrangement with unobstructed
ease, whether my aim was the galley, lower helm station (with full standing
headroom, thanks to Dixon’s ample profile), or dinette area. The
stairwells—one leading down to the master and VIP forward, and the
other leading to the guest stateroom and engine room aft—were unobtrusively
sidelined behind plush, Ultraleather-upholstered furniture.